the opposition of the pope, defied it in advance. The council used this remarkable language about Rome:

She has already lost the allegiance of the East; Alexandria, Antioch, Africa and Asia are separate from her: Constantinople has broken loose from her. The interior of Spain knows nothing of the Pope.

This unmistakably non-Roman utterance is of the last decade of the tenth century, and probably inspired by Gerbert himself, who had been educated in "the interior of Spain." It is to be noted also that Gerbert was chosen archbishop by the comprovincial bishops. They did not approve the choice of the chapter of Rheims, and therefore made and consecrated their own choice. But Pope John XV. sent his legate, who excommunicated the champion of episcopal authority, and, the secular power being against Gerbert, he was obliged to retire from his see into Germany. There he was greatly honored for his character and learning until his elevation to the papacy as Silvester II. In that elevation the emperor Otho had tried to institute a reformation of the degraded papacy. But he was not successful, partly because he mistook the nature of his own imperial power, and partly because he was weak enough to fall victim to a woman's revenge.

About half a century later a similar attempt was more successful. The emperor, Henry III.,

was implored to put an end to the scandal arising from the presence in Rome of three claimants of the throne of St. Peter. Benedict IX. held the Lateran, Gregory VI. Santa Maria Maggiore, Silvester III. St. Peter's and the Vatican. Henry came into Italy and assembled a council in the year 1046. By that council the three claimants were all deposed. (Two of them appear in the Roman register as having resigned.) Gregory VI. confessed himself guilty of simony in buying the papacy, which, however, appears to have been his one fault and not without palliating circumstances. To such circumstances must be attributed the friendship of the severely righteous Hildebrand, already a power in the Church, who went into exile with his unhappy friend. Clement II. became pope, and was the first of a line of very respectable German pontiffs, by whom the honor of Rome was redeemed.*

* The most distinguished among these was Leo IX. (Bruno, Bishop of Toul), the influence of whose reign was very great in preparing Europe to receive the bold and lofty claims of Gregory VII. Of princely lineage and of spotless life, he was, at least in the earlier part of his pontificate, an ideal pope. In less than five years he made three magnificent progresses in France and Germany, showing himself the worthy and veritable head of Christendom,

"Fervent, and full of apostolic grace,"

holding councils, receiving the obedient submission of

II.

And so we come to the second of the four chief popes of our period, Gregory VII. (Hildebrand). Has there ever been a greater than he since his first great namesake? Fearless, forgiving even when subjected to the most atrocious personal injuries, straightforward and inflexible in his duty as he saw it, the deadly foe of all wickedness and of all that seemed to him to make for the injury of the Church of God, using no carnal weapons, yet conquering the greatest sovereign of his time, by no means well spoken of by all men and yet extorting the admiration, in all ages, of the bitterest enemies of his cause; it is possible for men to say that he was utterly wrong, but it is hard for them not at least to bear him witness that he had a zeal for God and a majesty of character such as only the greatest of mankind exhibit.

He found Feudalism in the vigor of its days throughout Europe. He found the Western Church convulsed by fierce conflicts between the clergy who did not practise celibacy and their opponents; he found it honeycombed with im

penitent princes, and inspiring the national churches with loyalty to Rome as their centre of unity. Only in Italy, where he was betrayed into the error of campaigning like a secular prince, did he fail to show men what a pope ought to be. But he was not much in Italy.

purity and simony. Feudalism seemed to have much to do with this state of things. It led to the appointment of unfit members of great families to holy offices, bishoprics and abbeys, for the sake of the revenues. With these intruders, ignorant, vicious, soldier and robber prelates, lawless and unchaste, the comparatively innocent and humbler violators of the papal decrees and the canons requiring celibacy were involved in one common condemnation. When we think of Gregory's war against married priests we must take the feudal idea into consideration. A benefice was thought of as a fief. The clergy were, and are, necessarily, a caste. The reformation of the Church required that they should be a caste distinct from the secular orders whose powers and privileges depended upon their holdings. It was already beginning to be the case that married priests were leaving their benefices to their sons, and the benefices were becoming ordinary fiefs. The dangers of this tendency to the cause of religion were much aggravated by the prevalence of simony and its other self, lay investiture. We cannot, without some effort, understand a state of things so different from all that we are familiar with.* The

The few cases of lay holding of ecclesiastical offices of which we know in England are curious aud monstrous fossil survivals of this mediæval abuse.

separation of the ecclesiastic was more necessary in those days than even the most enthusiastic preacher of the brotherhood of man supposes the assimilation of the ecclesiastic to the laity to be now. If anything was to be done to save Christian society from ruin, the priestly caste, pure and untainted, must be the preservative force. Nothing but a conviction of its absolute necessity could have induced a man of Gregory's statesmanlike insight to make that hard and odious fight for celibacy. He foresaw, from the beginning of his pontificate, that his great struggle was to be about another matter, and with Henry IV., who was equally ready with him to enforce celibacy upon the clergy. When he asked Henry, according to the prescribed form, to confirm his election to the papacy (not to invest him or to crown him, be it observed), he warned him that there would be a struggle between them. He knew the emperor thoroughly, from his childhood. He knew the unscrupulous licentiousness, the tyrannical self-will and hypocritical power of recommending himself, which made that prince one of the worst the world has ever seen.

It must be remembered that at least from the time of Charlemagne the empire was esteemed a sacred office-it was the Holy Roman Empire. It was not a feudal dignity; it was not based on